Jackson, Ian. Northumberland Rocks — 50 extraordinary rocky places that tell the story of the Northumberland landscape. Newcastle upon Tyne : Northern Heritage, 2021. The richly illustrated and accessible book series of Northumberland, Cumbria and Durham Rocks are available to purchase from Northern Heritage.
23 Crindledykes Quarry
Theme: Earthquakes and folded rocks
Location
The quarry is now a Northumberland Wildlife Trust nature reserve and is half a kilometre south of the road known as the Stanegate, north of Bardon Mill
Description
Crindledykes is an old quarry which used to work a thick layer of limestone called the Great Limestone. The rocks in it have been bent and buckled into “folds” by earthquakes.
The limestone dates from Carboniferous times, 330 million years ago. The limestone is here because at that time all of northern England was just 5 degrees north of the Equator and was covered by shallow sub-tropical seas. It is the billions of shells, corals and small animals and plants that lived in those seas that make all limestones.
These rocks were folded when Britain and Europe were part of the building of an enormous mountain chain 300 million years ago.
The quarry is here because lime is valuable for making acid soils more fertile and it is an essential ingredient of cement. Just west of the quarry is a restored limekiln where they used to burn the limestone to make lime.
Limestone bedrock produces a very particular set of plants. Here they include: fairy flax, small scabious, hairy rock-cress, salad burnet, cowslip, hoary plantain and quaking grass.